Rasselas: a Tale. [together with] Elizabeth; or, Exiles of Siberia. A Tale founded on facts, from the French of Madame Cottin.: >>DOUBLE MINIATURE VOLUME<<

160 and 142 printed pages. 60 x 98mm. Original glossy white paper wrappers printed in green ink (somewhat worn, edges slightly chipped, spine with vertical cracks and faded titling) the publisher's list of Diamond Classics on the back wrapper lists these two titles as individual volumes- not a double volume. Jones' Diamond Classics. Welsh lists a copy of Rasselas, a University edition from 1825 for both titles and a later printing of 1830 (Welsh, 4069, 2047 & 2048). This printed wrappers bound double volume, produced a further five years after the individual publications, is a rare publishing/academic curiosity- a publisher using up leftover stock, perhaps, that did not achieve popularity, I assume, possibly due to its innate fragility. It was not entirely uncommon to publish a 'marriage' of two different and incompatible authors/novels in that era. Chiswick Press by C. Whitingham : Sold by R. Jennings, Poultry, London, published these same two novels together in 1818. Later in 1847, William Tegg and Co. London, issued six volumes in one, adding 'Belisarius' by Jean-Francois Marmontel, 'Solyman and Almena' by John Langhorne, and 'Indian cottage' and 'Paul and Virginia' by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, to Rasselas and Elizabeth -of which edition only one copy is located by WorldCat (British Library). Spielmann, 266 & 270, and Welsh, 4069, 2047 & 2048 for the titles published earlier and individually. This edition not found in WorldCat and otherwise unrecorded.